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Why geography lessons are the key to climate AND humanistic awareness

Why geography lessons are the key to climate AND humanistic awareness

1 December 2025

Read time: 10mins

‘What truly matters is that young learners can “unimagine” (unlearn) and “reimagine” (relearn) the changing landscapes of the unpredictable world within their classroom environment.’

Anna Myunghee Kim

Geography lessons are critical for understanding climate and humanism crises

I was so pleased to come across the letter ‘Why geography lessons are the key to climate awareness’, which the GA’s Chief Executive, Steve Brace, wrote for The Guardian in response to an editorial report of 1 November 2024, on climate-linked disasters (subtitled ‘Spain’s tragedy will not be the last’).

The pithy message was clearly a highly sought-after alert to the public, as every GA member is well aware of. The need to revitalise the geography curriculum to prepare future global citizens with critical knowledge and understanding of the world is apparent. That agenda can no longer be solely a concern for geography teachers but is a matter for the wider public. That was my takeaway from Steve’s letter.

I sensed that something could be added to the message, though: we must not forget the commitment of geography lessons to alert to the current decline of humanism. There are many underreported and underdiscussed dimensions of human suffering rooted in apathy and antipathy towards humanistic values, such as racial harassment and discrimination. The social and human setbacks are evident across all institutions, places and regions beyond the boundaries of the Global North and South.

We should pay greater attention to the growing and often concealed forms of injustice that many individuals are compelled to confront and endure across all societies, regardless of their ranking on major development indices. These should not be considered secondary to environmental degradation in geography-related lessons. I am reminded of Alastair Bonnett’s (2023) description of geography as ‘the world discipline’ that is a very ‘human’ project.

When I, as a parent of a key stage 3 student and a researcher striving to be a critical school geographer in Berlin, talked about the geopolitical ‘ignorantism’ prevailing both in textbooks and the classroom of the German public school system at the 2025 GA TeachMeet, I did not mean mere embarrassment about school children (and some average-educated adults) being clueless about regions and populations outside their mainland European Heimat (homeland).

Instead, I meant to express my concern about ‘ignorantism’ that increasingly permeates the school environment and, in turn, fosters bigoted beliefs among children. Learning environments that trivialise the study of regions and peoples of the world are inevitably drifting away from the pursuit of global citizenship education.

Ignorantism has no place in geographical learning, which is ultimately global learning

What I call ‘ignorantism’ is both an intellectual and a human apathy. It is far more insidious than simple ignorance (of missing some knowledge), particularly in the context of school education. The lack of positive curiosity and an unwillingness to comprehend the lesser- or unknown dimensions of the environmental and human makeup among the growing population, which includes young children and students, is an alarming manifestation of the breakdown of humanism.

On the other hand, I remain hopeful. I have been grateful to encounter many stunningly powerful voices of critical geographers, mainly from the UK. The work of John Huckle, Simon Catling, Christine Winter and Margaret Roberts, along with that of many other brilliant geography educators I met at the 2025 GA Conference, has been genuinely inspiring.

Realising that there are geography educators passionately dedicated to making geographical learning more critical and pragmatically impactful towards a deeper understanding of the world has given me much hope.

The (un)presence of geography lessons outside the UK

A dominant post-war Western hegemonic geopolitical worldview has led many individuals in Western geographies to essentially view the world through a four continent framework – America (USA), Europe, Asia and Africa – while remaining blind to the 22 geographically recognised subregions.

The mistaken notion that places and people in Asia, the largest and most geopolitically and economically dynamic continent on Earth, with a population of 4.8 billion people, is seen as a synecdoche for the 1.4 billion people of the People’s Republic of China in the Far East might seem trivial when encountered on the street.

It has been all too common to meet children (and adults) in Germany who equate Asia/Asians with China/Chinese, treating them as interchangeable. But it is not a casual matter to ignore when it occurs repeatedly among members of school communities. When such a misconception is ‘sustained’ to the point that it is regarded as ‘normative geographical knowledge’ in broader society, it stands out as a pernicious form of ‘ignorantism’.

One of the main root causes of bias-driven bigotry and hate crimes, which continue to rise in Germany, and especially in German formal education in recent years, might be the lack of geographical and global education. Geography lessons have been significantly reduced across all key stages in Germany over the past two decades, and is no longer taught at primary level.

At secondary level, it is only taught as a single discipline in academically focused grammar schools (Gymnasium). In all other secondary schools, it has been replaced by what is known as Gesellschaftswissenschaften (GeWi), referring to social science studies. Despite being an interdisciplinary school subject that is designed to cover geography, the focus of GeWi is predominantly political education and history.

The waywardness of academic geography matters too

About a month ago, I came across another compelling article, ‘Why the waywardness of academic geography matters’, by Robert C. Thornett, a US-based geography educator. Thornett’s bold emphasis on the significance of geography education as the study of regions of the globe – as he puts it, ‘a field of explorers and visionaries’ (Thornett, 2025) – resonated with thoughts that came to mind when I read Steve Brace’s letter to The Guardian a year ago.

Can today’s globalised societies afford to leave their citizens so hopelessly disillusioned and disempowered by not being willing to be informed about the damage being done to the physical and human geographies of the world? Can we expect future generations to achieve sustainable development without sustainable humanism? Wouldn’t Education for Sustainable Development be just an elitist manifesto if we were to teach only half of the problem of the damage being made to all living beings on the Earth?

Final thoughts

The articles by Steve Brace and Robert C. Thornett are compelling reminders to everyone who cares about the future landscapes of Earth and the vital role of geography education in creating informed citizens. That importance now encompasses a bold awareness of a multitude of humanitarian threats alongside the imminent climate hazards. The rise of anti-liberal democracy, anti-globalism and anti-diversity, as well as anti-human migration, is silently jeopardising the sustainable development of the globalised world.

I believe that children, particularly within Western formal education, should be encouraged to think more critically about the everyday damage to human values and rights that threaten the sustainability of humanism. Recognising varied crises in humanism in the context of a so-called developed country is as critical as understanding the climate crisis in geography lessons.

In my view, when addressing sensitive issues of human justice and equality, geography lessons do not need to be framed with politically charged buzzwords such as decolonial (or anti-racist) and EDI (equality, diversity and inclusion) awareness. What truly matters is that young learners can ‘unimagine’ (unlearn) and ‘reimagine’ (relearn) the changing landscapes of the unpredictable world within their classroom environment. Critically engaging geography lessons can accomplish this to save humanism (and the Earth).

References

Bonnett, A. (2023) ‘What is geography?’ in Jones, M. (ed) The Handbook of Secondary Geography. Sheffield: Geographical Association, pp. 12–19. Available at https://portal.geography.org.uk/shop/view/P020616
Brace, S. (2024) ‘Why geography lessons are the key to climate awareness’, The Guardian, 3 November. Available at https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/nov/03/why-geography-lessons-are-the-key-to-climate-awareness
Thornett, R.C. (2025) Why the Waywardness of Academic Geography Matters: Returning the discipline to its regional roots would offer numerous benefits. Available at https://jamesgmartin.center/2025/10/why-the-waywardness-of-academic-geography-matters